


Numina

by Sakon76



Series: Cornucopia [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: American Gods Inspired, M/M, Supernatural Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27552964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sakon76/pseuds/Sakon76
Summary: Some marriages last "until death do us part."  Some last longer.  When the love of your life is a literal kitchen god, the afterlife is a bit different than expected.
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann
Series: Cornucopia [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2014006
Comments: 49
Kudos: 138





	1. Luminosity

"No, I'll be all right," Jack insisted one more time. "I know you're worried, Ellie, but I really will be."

"Papa...." Her blonde hair was streaked with grey and her dark eyes were worried.

Jack sighed. "Look. I will miss your daddy for the rest of my life, but I do not need a babysitter. Go home. I am going to have something to eat, then take a nap, and when I wake up I will read a book. If it's too much for me, I promise I will call you."

His daughter still looked dubious and mulish, a Bittle through and through, but she eventually nodded and tiptoed to press a kiss to his cheek. "Take care, Papa. Call if you need me."

Jack hugged her. "I promise. Drive safe, chérie."

He waved as she got in her little blue car and drove away, then closed the door.

And Jack went to the kitchen, where his husband was waiting.

Eric turned and smiled, golden and blinding. "Finally got her to leave?"

"Yes." Jack sat down on one of the kitchen bar stools, content to watch from across the counter. Eric was hard to look at like this, on the verge of what Jack could actually stand to see without looking away, but he was so, so beautiful, and Jack still wasn't over that moment, a week ago, when he'd thought he'd lost his husband. A horse kicking him in the chest would have hurt less than Eric's stroke. "Any reason you're hiding from them?"

Eric shrugged and pulled a dish out of the oven bare-handed. "I don't want to deal with the explanations yet."

Jack blinked. "But I thought--"

"Oh, you can see me, Mister Zimmermann, because of certain promises we made some years ago--"

"I remember," Jack said with a smile.

"-- _but_ ," Eric said, pulling plates from the cabinet and starting to dish up the ratatouille, "it's somewhere between possible and likely that our family will be able to, as well."

"Wait, really?"

Eric shrugged and slid Jack's plate to him, then took his own place next to his husband. "Genetic consanguinity, years of exposure to gods hiding in human skin... who knows why. But yeah, it's possible."

"I'm not a god."

"No, not yet, but you will be," Eric said, as implacable as the tide.

Jack blew on a forkful of their lunch, then put it in his mouth. The flavors melded together, perfection. "Delicious."

"Why, thank you, I do try." Eric smiled as Jack kissed him. His appearance flickered from moment to moment, now in his twenties, now in his forties, now older, but his mouth was real against Jack's, and kissing him had never gotten stale.

"So, what, you're going to hang around, cooking for me, until I kick it?"

Eric gasped. "Excuse you, Mister Zimmermann, I have _work_ to be doing! Cooks to guide, kitchens to bless, disaster feasts to repair."

Jack waited.

"But, yes, that too," Eric agreed with a cheeky grin. "You surely do not think that I, of all deities, am going to leave my husband cooking for himself."

Eric's body was buried, Jack was legally a widower and had a shit ton of paperwork to deal with about that, but right now, sitting here next to his husband, having lunch, he was, he found, all right.


	2. Liminality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Jack's turn to go.

Jack struggled for breath. Just one more, just one more--

"Bits," he gasped, tears burning the corners of his eyes as the world tunneled away, black sweeping in from the edges.

A hand, warm and solid, took his.

"I got you, darlin'," a voice said. "It's all right, Jack. Just let it go."

And like that, the world fell away.

Jack stood in blackness, in silence. The beeping of monitors had vanished, the scratchy sheets, the smell of antiseptics. It was all gone. There was only himself, and the one holding his hand.

Eric's other hand brushed Jack's cheek, sweeping back hair. "How're you feeling, honey?"

"...Okay," Jack said. Which was true. He didn't feel fantastic, but neither was he hurting anymore. "Bits, what happened?"

"You died." His husband smiled softly, his presence the only reference point Jack had in this darkened space. "And now you've got a choice to make."

"A choice?"

Eric nodded, his dark eyes calm. "And there's no wrong answer, Jack. Either way you choose, I'll go with you."

"Okay. What's the choice?"

Eric smiled. He swung their connected hands up between them. "We can stay here, Jack, be small gods in the living world, or... we can move on." He looked beyond Jack. Jack half-turned to see what Eric was looking at, but there was nothing there. Just more darkness.

Except... now he could hear something. As he concentrated, Jack realized it was voices. His parents. His grandparents. Lardo. Ransom and Holster. But not Shitty, not yet. Nor Parse. But he could hear other friends, old teammates, Tater and Thirdy and Marty and Guy. The barks of dogs he had had. Laughter. Good times. Games to play.

Jack's eyes prickled with want, a sudden heart-wrenching longing to see loved ones long gone. He would have gone to them without hesitating, except for the hand staying his own.

He turned back to his husband. To his choice. "And... if we stay?" His voice was hoarse.

"I won't lie. It's not the easiest of existences," Eric told him. "Not in the Western world, not anymore. But there's still cracks and spaces for small gods to live in, and teach what they love, if you want to try it."

"And if we fail?"

Eric looked beyond Jack again, toward the voices. "Then we go the other way. Pretty sure I know most of who you're hearing, honey, but... I can hear some voices that I know faded away centuries ago. So I think they're there too. Whatever there is."

"You don't know?"

Eric shrugged. "Never been there." He looked back up at Jack. "So what'll it be, sweetpea? Where're we going?"

And Jack was tempted, really he was, but... they had time. If they were going to end up in the beyond eventually anyway, why not take the scenic route?

"Let's stay," he told his husband.

Eric smiled. It was as brilliant as the sunrise. "I was kind of hoping you'd say that."

"So what happens now?" Jack asked.

Eric's fingers laced through his. "Now, sweetpea... now I get to show you my world."

He turned to lead Jack away from the voices, and like that, the two of them were gone.


	3. Locality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack has to find, and claim, his place.

They stepped into sunlight, and Jack fell to his knees with a gasp. He felt _terrible_. This was worse than the hospital had been, even. Everything hurt, he was going to throw up--

"Steady now. I gotcha." Eric was beside him on his knees, coaxing him up. His brown eyes were concerned, but he didn't hesitate to thread fingers through the hair on the back of Jack's head and pull him into a firm kiss.

Slowly, the feeling of wretchedness dimmed, ebbing away as Jack and Eric shared breath. A few moments later, with a last touch of his tongue to Jack's teeth, Eric drew away. "Better?" he asked.

"A little. Bits, what...?"

"You worshipped me so thoroughly for, what, near seventy years, that I've got energy to spare and to share right now. And you, sugar, are currently a god without a domain. Which means you've got no reserves."

Jack had never really thought about this part. Eric, it seemed, had. "So how do I get a domain?"

Eric's smile was sweet and just a little bit sarcastic. "Jack, you're telling me you don't know what you're a god of?"

"...No?"

"Oh dear lord." Eric briefly face-palmed. "Honey, if you said the name Jack Zimmermann to anyone on Earth, what would be the first thing they'd associate with you?"

Jack thought about it for a second, then his eyes widened. "...Oh."

"Exactly," Eric said, even as realization was blooming breathless behind Jack's breastbone.

"Hockey," Jack murmured. He met his husband's eyes. "I'm... a god of hockey?"

Grinning, Eric hauled him to his feet. "So, mister god of hockey, shall we get you to your domain?"

"How?"

Fingers tapped at his chest. "You got a feelin' here? Somethin' like the smell of ice, the weight of a puck on your stick, the sound of it hitting the back of the net?"

"Yeah."

"Grab onto that, and _pull_."

Clumsily, not sure exactly what Eric meant or what he was doing, Jack closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of a rink.

Of... home.

Opening his eyes again, he felt the familiar chill against his cheeks. Looking up, he saw his own jersey hanging in the rafters.

"Very nice," Eric said from by his side. "That's how you move from shrine to temple to acolyte in need. You just grab that essence and go. But first, I think... you need to claim your domain."

"How... how do I claim it?" Jack asked. He swept his hand around, indicating the empty rink. "Hockey's a team game, Bits."

Eric was suddenly before him, looking twenty-two again. He wore his Samwell uniform with the C, and his stick was in hand. "I worshipped at this altar, too, Jack. Maybe it's not a one-man game, but there's still only one way to win it."

They were at center ice, Jack realized, and he too wore a uniform, held a stick. Beyond Eric there was a net, and behind himself, he knew, there was one as well. There shouldn't have been, equipment was supposed to be put away when there wasn't practice or a game, but there it was.

"You want this domain, Jack?" Eric asked him, and his eyes were hard. He was in faceoff mode. "If you want it, prove it. Take it from me."

From nowhere, the puck dropped between them.

It was the best hockey, the fiercest one-on-one Jack had played in... ever. Even mortal, Eric had been an incredibly fast skater, with soft hands, and great skill at reading the ice. Newly divine, Jack was struggling to keep up. But he was better at hockey than Eric, he knew he was. He had spent almost his entire life on the ice, training, playing, coaching. Eric hadn't. The fact that Eric knew how to be a god and Jack didn't was not going to be what decided this match. Jack _wanted_ this. He wanted this rink. Wanted this ice. Wanted this domain. He pushed and pushed and used every trick he knew, footwork and technique coming back to him after years away from the ice, plays roaring back to life, until he was burning, fiery, incandescent--

The puck hit the back of the net coming from a beautiful, perfect, _textbook_ slapshot off his stick. Goal.

And the world exploded for Jack.

He could feel every rink. Every frozen pond. Hundreds of thousands of sticks and skates. The clatter of pucks in a bucket, the crisp scrape of blades on ice, the visceral adrenaline of a game--

It all opened for him, overwhelmed him, and then snapped into place.

"...Oh," he said, not for the first time, as he understood what he was, his domain, his place in the world.

His husband was before him, blond hair tousled and sweaty as he rested a gloved hand on Jack's chest. Over his breastbone. Over this amazing feeling that was the blood pulsing in his veins, his reason for existence.

"Incredible, isn't it?" Eric asked softly.

"Yeah," Jack said, feeling it all swirling around and through him. He met his husband's eyes. "This is what it's been like for you, all this time?"

Eric cocked his head to the side, smiling. "Well, you know, probably a little different. But, yeah. This is what I am. What we are, now."

Unable to find words to express what he was feeling, Jack leaned down, grabbed on, and kissed his husband, as deeply as he knew how.

Eric, brilliant as the sun, melted into it.

For time unmeasurable, they stayed like that.

Eventually, stadium staff hauled goals out onto the ice, set things up for practice. Eventually, coaches whistled and players shouted, skating around or through the divine couple locked together mid-ice.

Eventually, Jack and Eric drew apart.

Eric's hand was still fisted in Jack's jersey, but he was no longer in his own hockey uniform. Instead, he was wearing slacks and a button-down shirt, an apron over them to keep food splatters off his clothing. "I gotta go take care of some of my own," he said, never looking away from Jack. "You gonna be okay, honey?"

"Yeah," said Jack. "How do I find you?"

"You know that feelin' you got for me?" Jack nodded. "Just follow that if you need me. I'll come check up with you in a bit, but right now, I gotta go see to a catering emergency in... oh, lord, London of all places." One more soft kiss. "You good, Jack?"

"Yeah," Jack said, knowing he needed to let go of the boards and figure out being a hockey god on his own. "I've got it, Bits. Love you."

"Love you too, sweetpea," Eric said. "See you soon." One more kiss, and he was gone.

Jack smiled, then turned to the practicing athletes. He was going to find some youth hockey players to check in on next, but for right now, the third line here really needed to work on their cohesion.


	4. League

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack visits the Cup.

It was months before Jack even thought about the Cup. He didn't know why; it wasn't like the pro teams he spent some of his time guiding weren't all obsessed with it.

(He'd been obsessed with it, once. Before he'd realized that the people he needed to prove his worth to really weren't important after all. And then he'd won it. A lot of times. Now it just seemed like a curiosity. Though still one worth a visit.)

He ended up in the Hall of Fame first, in front of the original Cup in its protective case. He'd been there before, seen it before, but looking at it now, the Cup seemed to almost shimmer. "Huh," said Jack, leaning in for a closer view. His fingers slipped through the glass and before he could pull them back, made contact with the silver chalice.

It _bit_ him.

He yanked his hand away, cradling it, checking for damage. Other than an unpleasant tingling in his fingertips, there didn't seem to be any. But as he looked back up at the Cup, Jack's eyes widened.

Before it had barely shimmered; now the Cup was radiating power, chaotic swirls of colors he couldn't name coruscating across its surface.

Narrowing his eyes, Jack stood watching the artifact for a long while.

It wasn't alive, he eventually concluded. But nonetheless it was very cranky. He had the impression that he'd woken it from a nap that it had been enjoying.

"Sorry," Jack said, and turned away, crossing the room to where the current Stanley Cup stood. It was out in open air; Jack knelt down next to it, fingers hovering, skimming over the bands until he found the spelling errors, or rather their lack, that he was looking for. "Replica Cup," he said with a nod, standing.

Still....

Jack hesitated, then touched the Cup.

This one didn't snap at him. It did rouse at his touch, but the colors only swirled sluggishly. It was even less alive than the original.

"Huh."

Bowing his head in acknowledgement to the Cup, Jack turned away again, and stepped between here and there, to the location of the third Stanley Cup, the Presentation Cup.

It was in Vegas, apparently, sitting in an office at the Aces' arena. Kent, long a part-owner of his old team, had probably been insufferable that they'd won again.

Jack approached the Cup. This one... surely this one, he thought, had to know him. He'd lifted it seven times, had his name engraved on it a couple more as a coach and a part owner in his own right.

But he wasn't expecting the rush of warmth and golden energy that greeted him, as tactile and affectionate as only an old friend could be.

(Jack felt a sudden pang, thinking of Shitty, one of his few friends who was still living. Maybe he could convince Eric to leave a maple-apple pie in their old friend's kitchen?)

Turning his attention back to the Cup, Jack smiled, letting himself pet the living silver. Unlike the other Cups, this one was definitely alive. He could feel whispered memories under his fingertips, the places it had gone, the people it had seen, the effervescence of champagne drunk out of it. He could feel the echo of his father's fingers on it, and a memory of his own, and his grandson's.

This Cup was filled to the brim with nearly two centuries of living energy, and Jack's breath caught when it offered it all to him.

"That's yours," he protested.

The Cup gave him a very clear impression of rolling its eyes. Impressive for an inanimate object.

It was a hockey trophy, it told him. And he was the god of hockey. What was its, was his, to use as he needed or desired.

Jack considered that. Thought about gifts given unasked. Thought about touchstones and lodestones, and the need for new friends, ones who remembered you as an infant, and still offered you respect. "Thank you," he said eventually.

A moment later, he asked, "But what about the wishes?"

The rippling rainbows of light were like laughter as the Cup confessed that half the time, it wasn't even involved in granting them.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I had to write this when I learned about the three different Stanley Cups. And I may have spent way too much time looking at tiny maps, trying to figure out the layout of the Hall of Fame. ^_^;;


	5. Legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Eric deal with their family. Finally.

"Great job, Robbie!" Jack tousled the boy's hair as the seven-year-old grinned up at him. "Just keep remembering that sharing the puck is half the fun."

"Yes, Coach Z! Oh, hey, my dad and grandpa are here! You want to meet them? My dad was in the NHL."

Jack smiled. "Sure." He skated leisurely after the thunderbolt and reached the gate as Robbie was gesturing expansively with his stick.

Manifesting, he'd found, wasn't actually that difficult, as long as he accepted it was an ephemeral thing. Kids would have a blurred memory of him as Coach Z. Adult players would only remember their coach or teammate Jack working with them on drills. And once off the ice, none of them would give him a second thought.

Jack Zimmermann was truly dead.

Or so he thought, until he looked up at Robbie's dad and grandpa, and saw familiar faces.

"Papa?" his son whispered, overlapping with his grandson's "Grandpapa?"

The shock on their expressions surely mirrored his own. "...Theo? _Ricky_?"

"Holy Christ, Uncle Shitty was right and you've come back to haunt us all for enrolling Robbie in hockey lessons--"

As Jack's eyes dropped to Robbie, whose own expression was morphing into confusion, he suddenly realized that he'd never asked the boy's name.

"You're a Zimmermann," he said.

Robbie's nose scrunched up. "Yeah?"

"Robert... Zimmermann," Jack said with a sinking feeling, staring at his great-grandson.

Robbie's father squirmed a little. "Robert Jack Zimmermann," Ricky admitted.

Jack deliberately drew a breath. And another. "That... is a lot of weight to put on a little boy's shoulders," he said finally, holding back the rage flooding through himself. It could have consequences, and he didn't want to visit them on his family, let alone a rink of innocent hockey-playing children. "And I'm not a ghost. Was your uncle high?"

Theo nodded, but was still wide-eyed and pale. "Papa, you died eight years ago. You need to move on. Daddy's probably waiting for you...."

"Crisse." Jack covered his face with one hand. Eric had warned him about this. Well, not about this in specific, but about their family in general. "I am fully aware that I'm dead, Theo. There are more possibilities out there than just ghosts. As Bits is also well aware."

Theo's eyes grew even wider. His expression would have been comical on anyone, but on a sixty-three-year-old engineer, it was hilarious.

Ricky wasn't so reticent. "What other possibilities?" Jack's grandson demanded.

Fuck. He couldn't do this without talking to Bits first. "Family dinner this Sunday," Jack said instead. "Bits and I will be there, and we'll talk about it then." And he pulled a bit of power, and disappeared.

* * *

"Well, of course ghosts are real, honey!" Eric's laugh was golden, but not mean. Never mean, to Jack. "Lord, have you forgotten everything Mandy and Jenny got up to, back in the Haus?"

"I... always thought that was Ransom being high-strung," Jack admitted. "They were real? I mean, they never did anything to me. That I noticed," he amended.

A floury hand patted his before Eric went back to kneading dough. "They wouldn't've, sweetheart. They knew you were having a hard time of it, didn't want to make things worse."

"But Ransom was fair game?"

"Ransom may've coral reefed every exam, but he had Holster and was a helluva lot less likely to fracture than you."

"Excuse me?"

Eric sighed and stopped working the dough for a minute. "Jack. People who've died, even just for a couple minutes, have a sort of a crack where the body and soul are joined. It can be dangerous. They were both smart enough to read between the lines of those rumors everyone kept talkin' about, and they didn't hate you, so mostly they left their teasing to Rans and Holtzy. And Shitty," Eric added, "but I'm guessing he probably wrote that off to being high or wasted."

"Are they still there?"

"Lord, no!" Eric laughed and went back to his work, shaping the dough and putting it in a bread pan to rise. "March--you remember her?--well, she was a bit of a natural medium, and as far as I know, was kind enough to let the girls in on one of her threesomes with the boys my junior year."

"Wait, you're saying sex with Ransom and Holster was so good it literally sent them on to heaven?"

"Le petite mort," Eric said in his usual horrible accent, grinning.

* * *

Eleanor was mostly sure that her brother and nephew were liars. Still, she hadn't objected to the idea of a big Sunday family dinner, so she'd offered to host. Theo and Candy had moved to a smaller house after becoming empty nesters, and John was so seldom home that she wouldn't have trusted him to have plates, let alone cutlery.

...All right, he probably did, but it was the principle of the thing. Besides, she had a big, lovely home and a dining table with enough leaves to fit everyone at the holidays. She'd definitely been the one to inherit their daddy's hosting gene.

"Don't forget the sugar, sugar," she could practically hear him tell her as she made a peach glaze for the angel's food cake.

"Yes, Daddy," she said, and accepted the canister he passed to her.

It fell from her hands as she stared at him.

"Careful, Ells."

Whirling, she stared at her other father, who had caught the sugar jar before it hit the ground. "Papa?" She looked back at the other man. " _Daddy_?"

"Didn't Theo tell you we'd be here?" her daddy asked.

"Well, yes," she spluttered, "but I figured he was trying to yank my chain or something." There had to be something not quite right with her eyes, she thought, because her parents were hard to look at, like gazing directly at the sun or something. There were weird afterimages surrounding them and they looked younger than she ever remembered them being, except the next moment they weren't....

Her papa put the sugar down on the counter and stepped behind her, wrapping his arms around her. "Close your eyes, Ellie-belly," he said, like he used to when she was really really little. "It helps not to look dead on."

"Really? You never told me that," her daddy said.

She felt Papa shrug as she swayed with him. "I was a new widower. You think I was going to stop looking my fill at you, Bits?"

"What's going on?" Eleanor asked.

Papa breathed a laugh. "Well, the long and short of it is, your daddy was always a god living in human skin. After he died, he reverted. And because he and I had made certain promises to each other, after I died, I got the choice to be a god too."

"A god." Oddly, as Eleanor considered it, the idea didn't seem that unlikely. After all, she'd never found anyone's food as good as her father's, and that was with a lifetime of culinary training and travel. "You're a god of pies, Daddy?"

"Well, cookery and plenty in general," her father allowed.

"And Papa, you're god of, what? Can't be hockey, it's over a century older than you."

"And yet I am," he replied simply.

"What, seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Just because it existed doesn't mean it had a patron for all that time," her daddy added on.

She considered it for a moment. "I guess that means Grand-père must be extra proud of you now."

"I... hope so. Probably." Papa sounded nervous.

She twisted to look up at him, blinking at the way he dazzled her eyes. "You don't know?"

"There's a place to hear the dead from, when we're doing the psychopomps end of things," he admitted. "But we can't go close enough to talk with them, or touch them."

"It's a one-way trip," Daddy added.

Eleanor considered that, then closed her eyes again, turned, and gave her father a tight hug. "I'm sorry. And I'm proud of you, Papa. Tell me what being a god's like?"

"Of course. Shall we bake together?"

Daddy laughed. "You just want maple-apple pie!"

Eleanor lit up. "Can you help me with that, Daddy? I can never get it to taste just right."

Daddy patted her hand, his face kind but just a little sad. "I'm sorry, sweetie. I'm not sure you can." He looked at his hands for a few seconds. "It's... 'cause I've always been divine, everything I made always had a little touch of magic in it, even when I was trying my hardest to hold back. And I'm not sure someone mortal can replicate that. Not even if it's you or your brothers, with gods' blood of your own."

"Oh." That was deflating, to know she'd never be able to make pie quite like her father's. But-- "Wait a minute. John's adopted. He hasn't got gods' blood."

Daddy's smile was hard to look at except from the corner of her eye. "Well, sugar, if your papa got to be a god because of the marriage vows he and I made, do you really think that promises to be a parent and child are going to be less vital? Because they're not."

"Theologically as well as legally speaking, John's just as much ours as you and Theo," Papa agreed.

"Oh. Okay. Have you told him yet?"

That won Eleanor matching grimaces from both her parents. "Not... exactly?" Papa said.

Daddy snorted. "It's harder to reach him. He doesn't cook if he can help it, so I haven't had a way to bump into him, and he hasn't set foot in a rink since Ricky retired, so Jack can't reach him either."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously," Papa replied. "Even gods have limitations. And we're neither of us gods of archaeology, so...."

"I still say he got the history bug from you," Daddy grumbled.

"I'm not disputing that, Bits."

"Mmm. Well, we can deal with the boys and the grands when they get here. Meantime!" Daddy clapped his hands. "What say we all bake something together, and you can help me chirp your papa's latticework, Ellie?"

"Being divine doesn't help with that?"

"Not if you're a god of _hockey_ ," Daddy teased.

"Say that at our next one-on-one," Papa retorted, smiling.

"Oh, is that what all the kids are calling it these days?" Eleanor chimed in.

Laughter brightened her kitchen, and the desserts they made were all the sweeter for it.

* * *

**Author's Note:** This is all I've got for now, but there are at least three other chapters in various stages of written. So hopefully I can finish them up sooner or later.

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: Edited by my Wonderful Husband, and the always superlative N-chan.


End file.
